What's wrong with New Jersey?

Wait a minute.

You mean there’s a New Jersey?

A few threads where we did this before.

This is exactly the sort of attitude that helps to perpetuate the myth and spread ignorance. I happen to come from this area that you refer to as a blight, dan. Do you have a personal experience that you can use to illustrate how you came to this learned conclusion?

Oh yes…we’re also proud of our title as the Attitude Capital of the World. :smiley:

Former Princetonian and Penningtonian, who had to move to California checking in. The blight from the Turnpike is just to keep New Yorkers from moving further south (I’m a former New Yorker also.) I drove to work past nice houses, farms with cows in the field, beautiful trees. The right parts of New Jersey are nice indeed. I grew tomatoes, do here also, but Jersey ones are just better. Better schools also - my kids were almost a year ahead of their grades when we moved here.

Trenton by the way, is looking much better. Don’t forget the Chambersburg District, with a high density of wonderful Italian restaurants. But keep maligning it, to keep the property values low until I move back.

Where abouts? I was born and raised less than two minutes from the Red. For quite awhile in the early 90’s the Wednesday night ritual was to pick up the new *E.C. Rocker * at Jersey Farms, cross the street over to the Red, have a few brews and read my newspaper. Ahhh, good times.

I suppose we’ve agreed that we’re talking about the one in Brick – there’s about a dozen other "Red Lion"s in the state. Of course, all this talk about it being a “nice place” is really throwing me off. Yes, they did a pretty nice remodeling several years back, but lets face it – before that it was a total dive bar. :slight_smile: Always did have good food, though.

What? I like dive bars…

Try drinking the water, if you dare!

All your questions will be answered. :smiley:

**New Jersey - Bad ** (not necessarily in order):

  1. High real estate taxes.

  2. Extremely high auto insurance costs.

  3. First “dead” major city, Camden (coming back a little now ).

  4. Pig farms (SJ).

  5. Traffic circles, yes, some still exist (SJ).

  6. Dirty local politics.

  7. Filthy rivers, hardly any fish.

  8. Rush hours traffic congestion, Rts. 295, 55, 42, 78, 278, 80 …

  9. Newark and Jersey City, while not a bad as Camden, on a larger scale are the pits.

  10. Very few nice restaurants v. New York, Philadelphia.

New Jersey - Good:

  1. Fruit & Vegetable Produce - Jersey (SJ) tomatoes are the best!

  2. South Jersey shore is pretty nice.

  3. Atlantic City casinos are pretty good.

  4. NJ water is a little better than NYC’s or Philly’s.

THE GOOD

You can settle in one place at the early stages of your career and never need to move again. This is particularly helpful for two career families. If one of you loses a job, no worry. Both of you will not have to relocate for the unemployed person to get a new job. No matter where you are in New Jersey you are a bedroom community to a major city…North Jersey to New York and South Jersey to Philadelphia and Wilmington.

Just so you don’t feel trapped in New Jersey you can get to just about anything you want in two hours as previously mentioned. Entertainment, sporting events, cultural events, great food and great getaways…you name it and you can be there and doing it tomorrow.

THE BAD

Because New Jersey is really a bedroom state, it makes for serious identity issues. Political issues are really better handled by the states we don’t live in. Further there is a reason people talk about where they live by giving their closest exit on the Jersey Turnpike. How else would you know where to get lost? Not to worry though, there is always a mall up ahead where you can compose yourself in the food court while eating Philadelphia Cheesesteaks or authentic New York Pizza.

THE UGLY

Have you ever met anyone with an identity crisis who you really liked? Well you surely won’t along the Jersey turnpike. We are all way too busy heading out to have time to get to know you.

I live in Trenton. Real estate is extremely low, gas prices are lower than anywhere else I’ve been (AND it’s pumped for you!), property taxes are high only with respect to the absurdly low price you PAY for the house but not for the actual value (and services you receive, such as trash collection twice a week), I can fairly easily commute to or visit NYC or Philadelphia, drive to the beach in under an hour or the mountains in about two, get all the New York and Philadelphia TV and radio stations (I get four PBS channels!), and neither the corn nor the tomatoes can be beat! If you’re a person who likes clearly defined changing seasons, the weather is probably about as good as you get in the U.S.

For cultural availability (Princeton is about 15 miles away, and Trenton has some quite decent stuff itself), cost of living, employment opportunities/salaries, and general ease, convenience, and pleasantness of life, I have yet to see any place that can compete, and I’ve lived on both coasts and in Atlanta. I may retire somewhere else when employment is no longer a consideration, and cold weather is more of a problem, but for now I wouldn’t trade.

New Jersey is a great state except for the industrial eyesore by the turnpike and the high taxes. 90% of the state is very pretty once you get west a little from the Mahattan edge. I don’t mind the outsider jokes, it helps keep them away!

Even though the cost of living is high, the state has lots of jobs and a variety of industries. If I ever lost my job I could find another one within commuting distance. By the way, mass transit is practically useless in the state, except for trains to NYC. Plan to drive everywhere.
I live in the middle of the state and my town is half farmland and half suburbia with easy access to malls and highways. I’m 1 hour from either NY or Phily and I get both of their radio and tv broadcasts. Come on in!

Last Saturday I went to Trenton to ride the brand new diesel LRVs to Camden, and was pleasantly surprised. It went through some lovely little Delaware riverside towns, real Norman Rockwell stuff. Although I did see enough ruined factories to hold me for a while. And Camden itself is still kind of scruffy but the transportation hub was soooo convenient–we zipped over the Philly to ride the trolleys and subway, ending up at 30th St. for cheesesteaks before getting on the NJ transit train for Penn Station, again via Trenton. The part near the station had an old cemetery and a bar that looked very nice. Princeton is gorgeous, my cousins grew up in Montclair and it’s lovely. Hoboken is a way cool place to live–I can’t afford it anymore myself! The problem is that, stuck between its powerhouse cousins to the northeast and west, NJ has been overshadowed since colonial times. The legacy of the race riots in Newark has yet to totally fade. And the part you have to drive through from the city, when it’s foggy, can easily be mistaken for the setting for BLADE RUNNER.

Ah yes, the jughandles. Some traffic engineers (and I use the word loosely) decided a while back that left turns were a bad thing. Just brilliant.

I used to do a fair amount of work in Jersey, so I went through this scenario a lot:

There’s the place I need to go, fifty yards to my left. Only another four miles until I can turn around and head back to it.

But it’s true about the other parts of the state. Princeton is lovely, as are many other spots.

I don’t consider it a myth, as I’ve seen it with my own eyes. So my personal experience is that I’ve been up there many times, and that’s my impression of that particular nook.

You know, just because you disagree with an opinion doesn’t make that opinion “ignorant.”

Ah, of course! There are several Red Lions, aren’t there. I immediately thought of the one nearest me, which ain’t nowhere near Brick Township.

So, does New Jersey still have those…left turn from right lane signs?

I don’t live there anymore, that’s what’s wrong with it. :smiley:

Yeah, PA wen’t downhill after your brief stay here, too.

All these potholes!

Meant to reply to this, too.

The jughandles, for the most part, precede left-turn-only lanes. That is, before they came about, you’d wait at the green light for eons until traffic was clear (or, more likely, until your light went yellow and oncoming traffic slowed enough).

Here’s a funny story. A great-aunt of mine was coming from the Midwest. She drove to NJ and began looking for my grandmother’s house. The directions told her to turn at the jughandle.

Now, people who aren’t from NJ don’t know what a jughandle is (they’re in other states, but I believe they have other names, like dog ears, or something). So my great-aunt drove up and down the highway, looking for the Jughandle.

Yes, that’s right. The Jughandle Bar. She was looking for a bar. Never did find it.

:smiley:

Actually, the northeast corner of the state is the complete opposite of blight - Bergen and northern Passaic counties are probably the most upscale part of the entire state. Especially once you get off the main arteries, it’s quite the charming area. As long as you don’t want to go shopping on a Sunday…

It’s just south of there where you get the “ugly” parts of Jersey - Kearny, Harrison, Newark, Elizabeth. And, as many people have noted, even these towns and cities have their interesting sides.